ABSTRACT
The medical profession was using a graduated classification of mental retardation, with ‘idiots’ at the lower range of ability, ‘imbeciles’ low to middle and ‘weak-minded’ at the ability level closest to normality. In the story of the weak-minded prisoner, was the work of William Guy, who from the 1860s mounted a personal crusade to confine the mentally retarded in separate institutions. As the local prisons were brought under the control of the Prison Commission in 1877, opinions about weak-minded convicts were naturally extended to the inmates of the county and borough prisons. In the workhouse as in the asylum, the variability of classification makes it difficult to discover how many inmates were insane, idiot, or weak-minded at any one time. The psychiatric lobby wanted separate institutions to be provided for offenders certified insane while serving sentences, claiming they were difficult patients to control and contain in county asylums.
